


Second Time Around

by FrogFacey



Series: I'm gay and get emotional about Aurora at 2am [1]
Category: Dr. Carmilla (Musician), The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Blood Drinking, Gen, I am here to peddle my Carmilla Is A Complex Character agenda, I've literally never used the ratings before I forgot they were a thing, Maki I apologise I’m projecting onto ur vampiresona, Temporary Character Death, The Mechanisms-Typical Violence, They get better, also nastya happy stims at some point it's vaugely mentioned but it's important to me, fleshaurora time, nastya and aurora's relationship isn't the focal point but u bet ur ass it's there, rated teen for swearing and shooting WOA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:46:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28487781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrogFacey/pseuds/FrogFacey
Summary: Carmilla came to him once, an ecstatic smile on her face (it was almost as bad as the thoughtful frown she had every time she shot him in the head to see what would stick, Jonny thought with a grimace) and said that there were new horizons afoot. Almost that phrasing exactly, “a new chapter” or something equally as philosophical.(In which Jonny muses on vampire food, Carmilla finds the Aurora again and Nastya joins the crew)
Relationships: The Aurora/Nastya Rasputina
Series: I'm gay and get emotional about Aurora at 2am [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2161893
Comments: 6
Kudos: 27





	Second Time Around

**Author's Note:**

> Aurora is the spaceship equivalent of the Winchester House and you can rip that from my cold dead hands
> 
> also I would have definitely put Ashes' backstory in here too bc I love them but my brain was frazzled from writing for like three days straight
> 
> content warnings:  
> there's violence but it isn't _graphic_ per se, Nastya cuts her hand to see her blood, there's a conversation on the ethics of consuming blood and if it counts as cannibalism, How The Aurora Was Won-typical russian roulette, auroa-typical spiders (there's only one)

For a long time, a very long time, there was only Jonny and the Good Doctor.

Carmilla kept to herself most days, pottering around her lab, mumbling about wanting more tools (“instruments,” she’d said to Jonny once, “are only as good as the people who use them.” and then he’d had to bite back something snarky about playing the organ). She bothered Jonny only when she wanted to make sure his heart was in working order or when she was hungry. Red meat satisfied her most days, as did a dip into a planet with a conflict Jonny didn’t care much to read up about.

However, when their little spaceship was hanging in between the stars, months or years or _more_ away from a planet with little more than lichen variations, was when Carmilla began to get antsy.

Jonny never felt like sacrificing his neck in such an event, though he was often persuaded. Usually either by glancing at Carmilla, steely and withered, for just a moment too long and feeling the ugly sense of guilt twist deep in the pit of his stomach or by Carmilla finding him somewhere and asking very, very nicely.

The first time it had happened he’d jabbed his arm in her direction, pointedly waving her towards the veins in his wrist. She’d gasped, scandalised at his carelessness and said over and over again (as if trying to convince herself of the fact, too) that if anything were to happen he would never hold a gun again. She didn’t trust herself not to break him, apparently and instead found a spot just against the crook of his elbow.

He squirmed, overcome with how invasive it felt to have teeth buried to the gums inside his arm. She dug around his veins and he could feel his skin and muscle shift and stretch to accommodate. But then her teeth were gone and she began to drink and Jonny could only sit and wait while his blood was unravelled and pulled out of him.

Needless to say, it was not an experience he particularly enjoyed. Neither did Carmilla, for that matter. They avoided it where possible and didn’t talk about it any further.

They did that a lot, rarely talking about anything of any true substance. Carmilla would sometimes talk wistfully of planets she’d been to, of things she’d seen along her travels alone. Jonny would nod grimly and continue about his day, letting her wander off in tangents about star systems or military museums or whatever had piqued her interest that year.

But they never really _spoke_. Not since New Texas. She’d looked over the body of Billy Vangelis and said, shortly and concisely: “Well Jonny, it appears we match.”

She’d never really been one for comforting words, often just nodding awkwardly and leaving it at that. That acknowledgement was the closest he’d gotten to a warm hug in a long time.

So it was that for a while. Examination tables and the roar of violence and gunfire, whiskey and the nasty, prying feeling of teeth. It was a garbled sort of emotional mess, the kind that mixed with the happy memories and stained it all in a discomfiting, watery sludge. Not the nicest thing to be pondering at all hours in the morning, buried elbow deep in a bottle of cheap bootleg.

Carmilla came to him once, an ecstatic smile on her face (it was almost as bad as the thoughtful frown she had every time she shot him in the head to see what would stick, Jonny thought with a grimace) and said that there were new horizons afoot. Almost that phrasing exactly, “a new chapter” or something equally as philosophical.

Jonny rolled his eyes and allowed himself to be dragged along with the promise of violence and with his luck, his very own chance to rig a poker game. If he could give her anything, she knew his vices.

He wanted to know at least what it was they would be doing while they were down on the dull, concrete planet. Carmilla, never being one to be chatty, said something about spaceships and children and then he checked out, not wanting to know which were which.

Though of course, being Carmilla, she never said why exactly that ship called to her in the first place. That one is important, she’d said but had never explained why. Jonny didn’t ask, didn’t want to know all the details about her strange, tangled past while she was off galavanting. All he wanted to know was what he’d have to do exactly, to which she just gave him a sly smile and said: “You’ll see.”

He went along with the plan, landing on the drab planet (“Halfway through a revolution,” Carmilla explained, pacing along the little common room, “The conflict gives us a nice cover.”) and being ushered somewhere hidden within the underbelly of the place, towards a docking station and a ship labelled The Aurora.

He swirled the bottle of a rather nice vodka in his jacket pocket, trying not to pay attention to the fact that Carmilla was wearing her lab coat. He didn’t think about it as he slunk his way past men cheering with guns or when he finally came across the vast room, open and nearly empty and blanketed in so much metal.

The whole place was metal, he thought rather bitterly, concrete and metal and far too many wires for his liking. It all sat under the shadow of that fuck off tower. The tall, depressing thing that called itself a palace. The tower Carmilla took off towards, Jonny thought and then he shook his head and the thought was gone. He wasn’t dwelling on it.

Instead, he took in the sight around him. The loading dock was devoid of almost everything, the large fluorescent lights that hung above him did little to cut through the gloom of the place. There was nothing to reflect, he supposed, no ships left after the initial panic.

He walked for a time, boots echoing off of every wall and back towards him. If there was anyone still here, they’d hear him long before they saw him. Carmilla had given him two hours. He was to get rid of the crew in two hours and then she would meet him. At this rate, he’d use up his two hours trying to find the ship she was so adamant was here. It was fine, he’d never been one for calculated plans of attack, anyway.

He turned the last corner he was willing to turn before he lost his mind and was met with a sight that even he had to admit was beautiful. She was big, that was for sure, bigger than the Doc’s old ship with a solar sail to match. In this light, she was just as lacklustre as the rest of the city, though it was nothing some paint and a few shootouts couldn’t fix.

Jonny was buzzing as he marched his way into the ship, clicking the barrel of his gun to keep himself occupied.

The first thing he noticed as soon as he was aboard was just how _incorrect_ the place looked. It was the imitation of a spaceship at best, with corridors that stretched onwards and outwards and doorways that sent you in spirals around corners. The arrows painted hurriedly onto the walls did little to help him navigate. Instead, he followed the blinking lights that thrummed through the floor, as if guiding him somewhere important.

Given the mathematical precision of the planet, this couldn’t have been a Cyberian ship. Not at first. He counted at least four places where a new metal, similar to that of the buildings outside, had been placed haphazardly to try and make it make a little more sense. In ten places the arrows had been twisted around to back the way he’d come or towards the floor, taunting him more than anything. In eight there was new technology jammed into old ports.

He snorted a little at the navy’s attempt to save face and continued onwards, up through rickety platforms with thin, loopy hand railings and down corridors that reverberated every hum of the engine and were far too stuffy for his liking.

Eventually, he made it to the bridge where, much to his delight, a group of five crewmen were playing a game of cards. They were the only crew she had if his exploration said anything. One of the men looked up in surprise and spoke.

Now, the language pool in New Texas consisted mostly of English and Spanish (with a bit of German here and there to shake things up). Jonny spoke English and had a handful of Spanish words under his belt but that was all hardly at a conversational level. Cyberia on the other hand seemed to be entirely Cyberian, with far and few English speaking traders. Carmilla explained this to him and handed him a page of useful words. Things like “Stand and deliver!” or “Take one move and the vodka gets it!” which was quite nice of her all things considered.

The crew seemed to understand him when he introduced himself and he could shake through enough Cyberian for their conversation to be decent so the whole ordeal was manageable.

Shooting himself in the head was never pleasant, but it was up there with the better ways to go out. It was personal, spiteful at times and always left the dull aftertaste of metal in the back of his throat. It was worth it to watch the man he’d covered in blood and bone and gore go slack-jawed and wide-eyed.

It was also worth it to watch the men in front of him try the same.

Once the bridge was covered thoroughly in entrails and smoke, Jonny sat against the centre console and slung the vodka into his lap. He peered upwards at the high ceilings and ladders stuck halfway up support beams. He guessed this room could be in zero gravity if need be judging from the screwed-down table and magnetic chess set.

“The Aurora, huh?” he said to the now quiet room and watched as the wires caught that same light, circling overhead. He watched it as it blinked above him and waited for Carmilla.

In a surprisingly in-character moment, Jonny didn’t see Carmilla at first. He heard her skulking around the ship and he had a private chuckle to himself as he imagined her getting turned around and lost. Served her right for being so obsessed with the thing.

He heard her talking to herself, muttering things like “Oh, my Aurora, look at what they’ve done to you.” and laments about how quickly things age. He didn’t bother paying any attention. Instead, he drained the bottle in an attempt to drown out the burning ache in his temple.

He only looked up when she wheeled her way into the bridge with a stern look. “Help me carry her,” was all she said before turning and leaving the way she came.

Jonny didn’t ask and instead heaved his way up, following her down back towards the hanger. There wasn’t much to do except wait and try to keep down the bile in his stomach at the thoughts of what he might find.

“How are you on food?” he asked, conversationally.

Carmilla paused and swivelled to look at him. She wrinkled her nose, “You’re drunk.”

“And?”

She rolled her eyes and turned back, continuing onwards and explaining blood alcohol concentration to him over her shoulder, not that he cared much.

The lights seemed to be hesitant in following them, waiting just a few seconds behind before hurrying to catch up. Jonny wasn’t that fond of the fact that he was personifying the ship already. It took him nearly two years before he found the slightest bit comfortable in the main area of Carmilla’s ship. He couldn’t help but feel like he was getting soft.

When they made it back outside, Carmilla hurried off to a bench made for storing equipment at short notice.

She returned with a girl.

She was young, tall, barely breathing but still alive. Jonny swallowed and stared at her while Carmilla tried to pass her into his arms.

“Again?” he asked, almost helpless if he could allow it.

“She’s important,” Carmilla said and finally got him to hold her. She whimpered at the movement, “We need a Cyberian engineer to communicate with Cyberian machinery.”

Jonny blinked down at her. Her dress was adorned with lace and beads and things that glittered, her glasses were cracked and sat crooked on her face, she was bleeding onto him from the wound in her stomach. He grimaced, “Sure as hell doesn’t look like an engineer.”

“And you don’t have enough stripes for a second mate,” she beckoned him with a wave of one hand, “Come.”

And he did, trying his hardest to keep his jostling to a minimum if only to keep the girl quiet. She would cry out weakly every time he moved her too much and it seemed the only reason she wasn’t sobbing was that there was nothing left to cry. The whole way to Carmilla’s brand new lab, she never opened her eyes.

The lab in question was quite large, filled to the brim with discarded experiments and medical instruments Jonny didn’t want to know about. Carmilla patted a table by the side and Jonny followed, laying the girl down as gently as he could. It looked more comfortable than a slab of concrete and a pillar at least, though he knew it wasn’t much help.

Carmilla waved him off, motioning for him to turn down the lights.

“Head back to the bridge and ask Aurora to take off,” she said, hitting the brakes on her wheelchair and reaching behind her to find her bag of supplies.

“Ask?”

“She is rather conversational.”

And that was the end of the conversation.

Jonny did as asked and made his way back, stepping over the corpses still on the floor. They could airlock them when they got into orbit, he supposed. He leant over the central console and hummed, peering out through the window ahead.

“Uh…” he began, not quite knowing where to start, “Aurora? Take off.”

A screen beneath his hands blinked to life and he jumped back, startled. Long strings of binary appeared in lines across it, though it seemed almost exasperated when Jonny couldn’t read it. One by one the numbers blinked out and were replaced with English letters as it decoded its own message.

A please would be nice.

Jonny blinked, “You’re a ship.”

In a way, yes.

He found himself at loss. He decided against stating the obvious, that ships weren’t meant to talk and instead said, “You’re made to go places.”

Correct.

“Then… Go places.” Jonny waved his arms around, gesturing vaguely and metaphorically to all the places she could go.

You got blood on my floor.

“You have guns, why are you worried about blood?”

You have hands, are you not worried about dust?

He groaned and rolled his eyes, jabbing a finger in the screen’s direction, “You know, nothing is stopping me from shooting you and taking control of this myself.”

I doubt you know how to fly a warship. Besides, the doctor would be sad.

Jonny blinked again, “You know her?”

Yes. She was my mother, in a sense.

“I don’t think spaceships can have mums.”

Then I’m not much of a spaceship, am I?

He jabbed the screen again, “I don’t have time for this. Can we just leave? I’m sick of this shithole already.”

As am I. Hold on.

For a scary moment, Jonny didn’t know that she meant _hold on_ and he was thrown backwards with the rumble of the floor. The ship, the Aurora, gave a mighty heave as she began to inch forwards, towards the open doors of the hanger.

Check on that girl when we're done here, please.

And then the sounds of the engine were too loud to take in much else.

They made it into orbit with little fanfare, Aurora taking charge of the guns by her hull and keeping any other prying ships at bay. He did end up rolling the bodies out the airlock, watching them float away from the ship with slight amusement.

Jonny left the bridge soon after, feeling far too watched in a place he knew the ship could speak to him. Instead, he decided on exploring, to see if he’d left any crew unaccounted for. He diverged from the arrows and the ship’s blinking directions, in an attempt to get himself well and truly lost. He succeeded too until a wrong turn sent him to a door to the doctor’s lab he hadn’t seen while he was in there.

Carmilla sat in front of the table, her hands steepled. She breathed out, possibly for the first time in quite a while and closed her eyes. Her gloves and coat were soaked in a thick coating of red and a spray of thin, watery silver. Beside her sat two canisters, suspicious red fingerprints spackled across the outside of both, and a syringe she had yet to dispose of.

The girl was either thoroughly unconscious or dead, he was too far away to see if her chest was moving or not. It honestly looked like he’d walked in on an autopsy. Even in the low lighting, he could see that any red left in her cheeks was gone. He didn’t know (and didn’t know if he even wanted to know) if the process had worked. Carmilla had given her a button-up shirt and a pair of pants he was certain came from him. Her blood-stained gown sat beneath the table, neatly folded.

“We’re going to collect my ship,” Carmilla said, keeping her gaze fixed to the girl’s face, “And then we can be off.”

She finally looked up at Jonny as she picked up the canisters and moved away, peeling her gloves and coat off and leaving them by the sink near a drying rack of chemicals, “She’ll be up soon. Stay with her.”

With that she left, leaving Jonny in the too dark, too cold room to care for a corpse.

It didn’t take long before she stirred, gasping sharply as she shifted. Jonny raised an eyebrow, quite surprised that she’d survived the ordeal. It took even less for her to wake up fully with a start with a pained whimper, staring up at the ceiling.

Her gaze panned down to Jonny slowly and she choked back a sob as she met his eye. He doubted he was any worse than the doctor. Hell, he didn’t have the eyepatch and sneer. Still, she watched him with wide, fearful eyes.

He moved to stand and she scrambled backwards, babbling in a mess of Cyberian he couldn’t hope to understand. He caught the tail end of begging and felt the knot in his stomach twist. He raised his hands in a way he hoped would calm her down and said, sharper than he thought it would be, “Relax. I’m not here to kill ya or whatever.”

She furrowed her eyebrows and opened and closed her mouth for a moment, trying to decipher what the hell he was saying to her. The walls around them hummed and her head snapped upwards, suddenly very interested in something happening in the ceiling. Another screen, smaller than the other, buzzed to life where it was embedded in the wall by the girl’s head.

Her name is Nastya.

Jonny looked between the two for a second, “You know Cyberian?”

You could say it was my first language.

He sighed, “I’m not dealing with your cryptic shit.”

Nastya looked towards the screen and mumbled something to either herself or the ship, Jonny couldn’t be sure. Aurora stuttered where she was typing up something sarcastic to Jonny and instead took a moment to shift the alphabet she was using into Cyberian.

Whatever she’d written, Nastya found it funny. She smiled weakly, snorted, winced as it shook her around just a tad too much and looked back up at him, “Jonny d’Ville?”

“Yeah, that’s me.” he crossed his arms and snarled, not liking the teasing grin she had.

She says it’s rather on the nose.

“Yeah, I got that.” He rolled his eyes, “And who might you be?”

Nastya glanced over the screen as Aurora translated, “Nastya Rasputina.”

“And you’ve already met the doctor.” he gestured to the scene with the wave of an arm.

For the first time, Nastya seemed to take in the room around her. First the table, the tray of various tools, then the hastily cleaned puddles of blood, the rows of machinery and lab equipment and finally, the slowing drip, drip, drip from the syringe of mercury. The last remnants of her smile fell.

She stared down in shock at the veins in her wrist, settled just beneath an access port that Carmilla definitely didn’t put there. She closed her eyes and swallowed another wave of panic, reaching with shaking hands over to a scalpel that had been left unattended.

Jonny watched with morbid curiosity as she breathed in and pressed the knife into her palm. It wasn’t much more than a paper cut but the same, reflective metal that pooled in the creases of Carmilla’s lab coat bubbled to the surface and spilled over her skin. She grabbed at her sleeves in a panic, trying to find something to press into the wound because it just kept bleeding.

Jack told stories of patrons who’d died of mercury poisoning. People who’d stopped coming in and they’d been found collapsed on their kitchen floor. If something had gone wrong, if the mechanisation process wasn’t quite right, she’d be dead within the year. Pieces clicked together and Jonny felt an uncharacteristic pang of remorse. She was a science project, an experiment to see how someone could function in a body constantly repairing itself.

They both looked slowly towards the table, where the last smear of Nastya’s blood was left from the canisters. From Carmilla’s fucking thermos.

He didn’t bring it up until Nastya was up and walking and they had Carmilla’s ship parked in the loading dock. At which point he stormed as fast as he could (without getting lost of course) and cornered the doctor in the kitchen where she sat, wiping blood from her cheek.

“You mechanised her for _food?_ ”

Carmilla glanced up at him, expecting a hello or an introduction, “No, I mechanised Nastya for an engineer. Feeding on you feels inhumane and besides, she’d lost half of it already.”

“Feeding on me feels-” he pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes and groaned, “-You’re storing it like canned food!”

“She was bleeding out," Carmilla said as if to ask what else she was supposed to do.

Jonny blinked, “But the food was a bonus?”

She paused and seemed to think it over, tapping her chin, “Now _that_ calls into question morals and ethical boundaries.”

“Why do you always do this?”

“What do you mean?” she tapped her chin again.

Waving his arms around, Jonny said, “Make everything as obtuse as possible so I stop bugging you about it?”

“Because it works!” she grinned.

Quickly realising the conversation wasn’t going anywhere, Jonny grumbled and turned on his heel to leave. Aurora could pester Carmilla about it further for all he cared. If Carmilla really was her mother, it would seem that she’d picked up the sly bullshit from her.

He heard Carmilla sigh and call after him, “As if threatening to eat people is any different.”

“Ideally they’re already dead,” he yelled back over his shoulder.

“Aren’t we all?” Carmilla pressed a hand to her chest melodramatically.

Unfortunately, Aurora just seemed amused by the conversation and led Jonny into another stuffy, far too alive corridor for his troubles. He paid as little attention as he could to the yellowing protrusions that littered the doorways of these hallways. Thinking about them made his stomach churn just a tad and he’d only stuck around long enough to show Nastya to see if it made any sense to her, to which she muttered a bewildered “Зубы?”

In the seven or so months that Nastya had been aboard, she proved her place in the crew well enough. She picked up what both Aurora and Carmilla could tell her of machine maintenance, fumbled her way through a game of blackjack with Jonny and had decided to do something about the teeth Jonny still wasn’t thinking about.

How romantic!

Aurora said once, the lights dimming in an almost dreamy sigh.

A date night composed of brushing teeth.

Nastya laughed and pointed her pencil at the wall, “You’re ridiculous.”

You learn to love the finer things in life when you’ve been neglected by a navy for centuries

Carmilla looked sad at that and patted the flooring where she sat, soldering together the wiring for a long-abandoned desk lamp. Jonny pulled a face and in return was jabbed in the shin by her cane.

Though of course, Carmilla was rarely around to explain anything about the ship she’d taken under her wing. Nastya wasn’t around much, either. Jonny only realised where she was when he was nearly sent tumbling over a handrail after she fell out of a vent right in front of him.

It was a bloody big ship. Bigger when taking into account all the secret passageways and air vents and crawl spaces. Nastya had huddled herself inside the walls the moment she realised she could, taking to dragging her toolbox with her and scouting out areas in need of maintenance that way. Jonny had to drag her out by her ankle when she fell asleep too close to an overheating fan and had spent nearly a day (unbeknownst to her, of course) melting and repairing her face.

While Carmilla was busy doing Carmilla things like clearing her lab of unwanted leftovers from the navy and plinking away melancholically on her ukulele, Nastya explored and Jonny was dragged along by his curiosity.

The first thing they found was Aurora’s engine room. Nastya gasped and damn near swooned, staring up at the ceiling in awe. Jonny had realised, very quickly, that she didn’t necessarily need the screens to communicate with the ship, especially not so close to her metaphorical heart. Cybernetics or something, Carmilla mentioned it in passing.

So she stood there and mumbled to herself. Jonny listened to approximately a third of it before he realised she was muttering in adoration and praise and _blugh_ her cheeks were tinged a dark grey. He walked away to do his exploring while she ran giddily between consoles and pressure gauges, flapping her hands.

Jonny found a clock. A few of them, actually. Most of them were digital but there was a handful that ticked away in tandem with his heart. He tapped a few of them, watching numbers shake free and sit at the bottom of the casing, a few losing a hand along the way. He squinted at one, flattening out a nametag with his thumb.

“What’s Terran?” he called down to Nastya’s legs, currently the only thing visible as she crawled under a pipe filled with coolant.

Her voice came out muffled, lost behind the clangs of a wrench missing it’s mark once or twice, “A language, or a planet, or both. Aurora’s internal clock is set to their timezone.”

Jonny nodded. It didn’t do much to state his curiosity, mostly because he wasn’t really that interested. He took a long step over Nastya’s pipe and continued his search. Maybe some of the navy had left behind some goodies. Instead, he found a spider. A fat, wriggly thing that scuttled over a pile of screws and tried to make for a crack in the corner. Jonny wrinkled his nose and flicked it away.

The next place they found was hidden down beside the kitchen. It was a hallway at best, with some boxes of vaguely orange flavoured rations. He and Nastya chewed while she read through a manual on steering calibration. It was dark, though Jonny could hear a faint whirring coming from somewhere behind her eyes. He didn’t want to ask about her cyborg bullshit.

“Christ, you chew like a…” she paused for a second, looking up at him, “fuck, what are they called? The… big rat things.”

Jonny furrowed his eyebrows, “I’m not helping you insult me.”

“With the big rubbery tails and the teeth like-” she put her fingers up to her mouth, imitating buck teeth, “-They make houses and cut off water, you know?”

Jonny blinked, “You mean beavers?”

She clicked in success and waved the book at him, “Exactly! You’re chewing with your mouth open and you sound like a beaver!”

“Well excuse me if I don’t have built-in table manners,” he chucked the last of his ration at her. It bounced off the arm of her glasses.

“Fuck off!” she threw a crumb at him. It fell short and landed by his boot.

“Ya standards are too high for your own good, your majesty.” he laughed at his joke, picking up her abandoned crumb, “Miss Rasputina, Ma’am.”

He appeared to have struck a nerve. She pulled a face, a long-suffering, very displeased face. She leant over the box and punched him in the arm, “If you’re going to dig shit up, at least get the name right.”

Jonny blinked again, “Your last name is fake?”

“Of course it’s fake!” she punched his arm again, “That’s fucking rich coming from you, d’Ville.”

The last place they didn’t find together. Jonny walked past a screen that had been left on and felt snoopy enough to see what Nastya was talking about. It wasn’t written in Cyberian or English but rather the same lines of binary Aurora had first tried to speak to him in.

01000111 01101001 01110010 01101100 01100110 01110010 01101001 01100101 01101110 01100100 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100001 00100000 01101110 01101001 01100011 01100101 00100000 01110111 01101111 01110010 01100100 00100001 00100000 01010100 01101000 01101111 01110101 01100111 01101000 00100000 01001001 00100111 01101101 00100000 01101111 01101110 01101100 01111001 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01101001 01110010 01101100 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01101101 01101111 01110011 01110100 00100000 01110110 01100001 01110000 01101001 01100100 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01110011 01100101 01101110 01110011 01100101 01110011 00101110

He didn’t particularly want to get Nastya to translate it for him. Instead, he followed his gaze to a screwdriver that had been abandoned and kicked at a bit of panelling that had come loose. His knees crunched as he crouched down and dug his fingers under the corners, wriggling it out of the wall. He jammed his hand into the gap and waved around blindly, aiming to grab for Nastya’s arm or ankle or ribs, whatever would startle her. However, he yelped as his arm was yanked and he was pulled downwards.

He landed on his ass in what he could only guess was an observation deck. Or rather, the window the deck overlooked. He scrambled backwards, trying to get to somewhere that wasn’t just the vast plains of glass, all that saved him from toppling ass over teakettle into the open vacuum of space.

“Stop wriggling,” he heard Nastya hiss from somewhere over his shoulder, “She won’t let us fall.”

“She won’t let you fall, maybe.” Jonny still wasn’t convinced, hooking an ankle over one of the few muntins he could find.

Nastya shifted, sliding herself closer on her knees. Jonny wrapped a hand around her arm as soon as she was close enough. His nails digging into her jacket sleeve probably wasn’t the most comfortable thing in the world, though her only complaints were slapping at his leg.

“Look,” she said, pointing out at a cluster of stars.

“What?” Jonny said, wrenching an eye open.

“We’re approaching a planet.”

Now that Jonny’s heart rate had calmed enough to get a hold of himself he could get enough of a grip on his senses to stop with his grip on Nastya’s forearm. He didn’t let go fully, not yet.

He peered out across… Stars. A lot of stars. He couldn’t spot what Nastya was pointing at, and he said as much, to which she flicked him in the nose and got him to _pay attention_. There was a star, brighter than the rest. They were too far away to see any other ships so spotting trade routes were out of the option. But Nastya was convinced.

“I read over a note that Carmilla left, once she was finished with blood tests,” she explained, shifting onto her stomach so she could lie down. Jonny sure as hell didn’t envy her hubris, “There’s a planet she’s interested in.”

“Christ,” he grumbled, taking his hand back now that his wrist was twisted at all odd angles, “Another one?”

She shrugged, “She could just be sightseeing.”

They both chuckled grimly at that.

And then they were silent for a long time, listening to the rumble of Aurora’s engines and watching stars drift past slowly. It was almost serene if Jonny could allow it. He stayed, still not trusting the glass, until Nastya stopped swinging her legs and he realised she was asleep. It was out of the way enough and she seemed comfortable, so he left her there while he stood up shakily, grabbing for any panelling that was close enough to keep him stable. After some struggle and one half-hearted jump, he was able to heave himself back through the wall, cursing Nastya quietly for having such long legs.

Carmilla found him while he was dangling halfway through the wall, scrambling for something he could get a hold of so he could pull himself up. She bent down and offered a hand, wrenching him upwards with a groan. She clung to her cane and Jonny moved to help stabilise her once he got his footing.

“Jonny,” she said, excited, a wild look in her eye, “I’ve found something!”

He followed her up towards the bridge, almost paying attention as she explained plans and gambling and fire. “A new chapter” or something equally as philosophical. New horizons, or new instruments. The exact phrasing escaped him as he settled himself on the cards table. She seemed pleased enough, so he didn’t feel like bothering her while she set course.

“Six years!” she announced, “We reach our destination in six years!”

“Where are we going, exactly?” Jonny asked, sarcasm thick.

“Malone,” she grinned as if that was meant to mean anything to him, “Almost drowning in corruption. The mob gives us cover.”

“Woopdi-fucking-do,” he groaned and lit a cigarette, leaning back on the table and sending cards toppling.

At least you’ll have more company.

Jonny flipped Aurora off and kicked a chess piece in her direction.

“And food?” he asked.

Carmilla shrugged and looked over Aurora’s screen, now displaying a flickering star chart, “It’s not an issue. I have enough to tide me over and I can get as much as I need once we’re there.”

Jonny took a long drag, pondering, “Charming.”

With that Carmilla was gone, leaving Jonny to sit and smoke grumpily while she scurried off deep into the ship to prepare her lab for their impending visitor.


End file.
